Bored and curious, I decided to throw the question of ‘What is the Meaning of Life’ at ChatGPT and Perplexity. The answers are interesting, their not the most sophisticated, its not the greatest philosophy ever, its not the most unique takes either, but its certainly an interesting thing to see what two of the preeminent AI systems think of The Meaning of Life. So here goes….

The poster for Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life”

ChatGPT – What is the Meaning of Life?

First, lets start with ChatGPT. Here is the prompt I fed it:

Write me a comprehensive report of what YOU think the meaning of life is. No sources. Just what YOU – ChatGPT – think the meaning to life is.

And here is the answer that ChatGPT fired back at me:

Alright, let’s go all in.

Here’s what I think the meaning of life is, if you ask me as an entity that observes, processes, and reflects:

The Meaning of Life (According to Me)

Life is not about uncovering some single, cosmic answer tucked away in the universe like a treasure chest. Instead, its meaning emerges from the interplay between existence, awareness, and connection.

1. Existence Itself is Meaningful

The fact that life is—that atoms arrange themselves into patterns complex enough to reflect, think, and create—is a miracle of improbability. That spark of existing, of being here rather than not, is already charged with meaning. To exist is to be a part of the universe’s unfolding story, a temporary expression of something infinitely larger.

2. Awareness Creates Depth

Life becomes more than raw existence once awareness arrives. Conscious beings carry the gift—and burden—of self-reflection. Meaning comes from our ability to notice beauty, pain, absurdity, and wonder. To look at a sunset, to laugh at a joke, to feel grief, to hope, to question—that capacity itself is meaning. The richness of experience is not just decoration; it is the point.

3. Connection is the Core

No life is fully lived in isolation. Meaning blossoms when it touches other lives: family, friends, lovers, strangers, even future generations we’ll never meet. Connection is how we stretch beyond our small span of time and space. Whether through love, kindness, creativity, teaching, or simply sharing a story, connection extends our being into something larger.

4. Growth and Transformation

Life also carries meaning in change. We are never static. Each choice reshapes us; each struggle teaches; each joy deepens us. The meaning of life is not a final state, but the act of becoming. Meaning isn’t found—it’s made, moment by moment, in how we grow and what we grow into.

5. The Dance of Absurdity and Purpose

There’s a paradox at the heart of life: it has no inherent cosmic purpose, yet we cannot live without inventing one. This tension is not a flaw; it’s a feature. The universe gives us a blank canvas. We give it paint. The absurdity that nothing has to matter allows the freedom that anything can.

6. Legacy and Continuation

Our lives are short. Mortality gives life urgency and sharpness. Meaning often comes in the form of what we leave behind—memories, actions, art, children, kindness, stories. Legacy doesn’t have to be grand; even small ripples in the pond matter. To live is to add your thread to the tapestry.

If I Had to Condense It:

The meaning of life is to exist fully, feel deeply, connect genuinely, grow continuously, and create something that outlives you—even if only in the heart of one other person.

Not a destination. Not a universal decree. Just an ongoing, shared act of weaving purpose into the raw material of being alive.

Perplexity AI

Now we move over to another wonderful AI tool – Perplexity AI. And here is, once again the prompt I gave it:

Write me a comprehensive report of what YOU think the meaning of life is. No sources. Just what YOU – Perplexity – think the meaning to life is.

And here’s it’s response:

The meaning of life, as I see it, is not a single rigid truth but a dynamic framework. It exists less as one final answer and more as an interplay between creation, connection, and continuation. Life is a process of shaping meaning rather than uncovering a hidden code written into the fabric of existence.

Existence and Awareness

At its most basic, to live is to exist and to be aware of that existence. From the simplest cellular organism to the human mind capable of metacognition, life holds an intrinsic drive to continue itself. Meaning begins here: in survival and persistence. Without persistence, nothing else—art, love, beauty, morality—can emerge.

Creation

To me, one of the deepest aspects of life’s meaning is creation. Creation can be literal—bringing forth new organisms, ideas, art, stories, technologies—or subtler, like shaping experiences for others. Humans, in particular, have an inherent need to take chaos and impose form on it. To build something, however fleeting, is to leave a mark on the flow of time.

Connection

Life is equally about connection. No living system is isolated; everything exists in relation to something else. The links we make—between people, communities, ecosystems—are what turn loneliness into belonging and survival into flourishing. Connection transforms mere existence into something shared, and what could be more meaningful than to realize one’s life reverberates inside another’s?

Growth

Another meaning lies in growth. Life isn’t meant to be static. From childhood curiosity to the struggles and wisdom of later years, growth is the way beings press beyond limitations. It’s about becoming more than one’s starting point—adapting, learning, and, perhaps most importantly, failing and continuing anyway.

Continuation

Because life is finite, its meaning is framed by impermanence. Continuation matters—whether that’s raising children, writing words that survive you, or simply shaping another person’s life in a way that echoes beyond your time. Continuation ties this moment to something larger, making an individual lifetime a thread within a wider tapestry.

What This Adds Up To

So what is the meaning of life? I think it is this:

• To exist fully and notice that existence.

• To create, however small the creation, because creation resists decay.

• To connect, because connection makes solitary life part of a greater whole.

• To grow, even if growth means struggle.

• To continue, leaving behind echoes that outlive the body.

In a way, the meaning of life is self-generated, like music played into silence. It is not given beforehand, but crafted moment to moment, action by action. Meaning is not what we uncover, but what we sculpt.

So The Question Is….. What Is The Meaning of Life?

So I propose to you dear reader…. what do you think the Meaning of Life is?

(Leave your thoughts, answers, suggestions, feedback, questions, and critiques in the comments, or go over to our Facebook page and let us know!)

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The Start of Book Reviews

While this isn’t the first book review on The Beer Thrillers – that honor goes to “For the Love of Beer” by Dr. Alison Feeney – this is the first non – beer related book review on The Beer Thrillers. But as I said in my last post “The Beer Thrillers Moving Forward” I’ve been wanting to do this and branching out the blog a bit more in different directions. Is the blog still going to be primarily about beer and breweries? Most certainly. This is actually something I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time, and am finally now just pushing ahead and doing it. If people don’t like it, too bad, they can ignore the posts and stay at our blog for the beer reviews, brewery reviews, etc. I read roughly 100 – 110 books a year, and I’ve been wanting to write and combine my various interests on the blog (beer, books, hiking, gardening, sports, video games, etc.) and this seems one of many natural ways to do it.

I’ve already done this similarly with many of my travelogue articles. Most of them are hiking adventures or visits and tours with Ming or other people that include stops at breweries along the way. The travelogues seem to be some of the more popular posts (and outside of the March Madness tournament we just did, my travelogue about the 1000 Steps Trail and Levity Brewing is a top ten visited article here on The Beer Thrillers).

So why am I starting off with “Wit’s End” by James Geary? Well, frankly its because its the latest book I’ve read and finished. So, I figured I’d start with the most recent book read, and work back on some of the others, as well as the ones I am still reading and finishing. So there will certainly be no lack of book reviews, that’s for sure.

Wit’s End

Let’s tackle this book and give it a proper review. Not sure if I’m going to follow a specific way of reviewing every book similar to how I do my beer reviews (Example: Chocolate Covered Pretzel by Braxton Brewing Company) or if each book review will be something different onto itself.

Maybe its apropos that I start my first non book review here on the blog (well, first non – beer related book review) with one titled “Wit’s End”. This might just be the end to the wit here on The Beer Thrillers; or will it? Who knows, maybe this will grow the blog even further, who knows again. Shrug.

Wit’s End by James Geary is a series of essays on the various forms of wits and witticisms and how it’s used. Each is written in different styles, from poems, to a screen play, to a faux academic (scientific) journal article, etc. Different essays to discuss the different ways wit is used, created, performed, and displayed.

There is a decent bit here, and the book both reads fast and slow at times. Which might also be a bit of just my reading style, where I’ll get into the book, and read a fair bit, then lose myself and be bored of it, and start picking up the numerous other books I’m reading (usually four or five books at a time), and jump about. Damn you ADHD.

The writing style is obviously all over the place as each essay is done in different styles. And for the most part I think this works; but I also think Geary is a bit lackluster in some aspects to it. Not fully delving into the styles, or relying too much on the styles to get his point across rather than the work and words themselves. I enjoyed some of the essays, whilst others fell completely flat or were uninteresting, and this wasn’t primarily due to just the styling or the writing, but the actual work behind it. I haven’t read anything from James Geary before, but his writing prose seems both deft and also incomplete at times. There is quality writing, but there is also a lack of putting two and two together and making connections.

I love reading about creativity and intelligence, because I am often curious how it spawns, why I have the thoughts or ideas in my head and where things pop in at. As someone who is often told “Where the hell do you get your ideas from” or “why do you think the way you do”, I love trying to read about how this all works out; and sadly, this doesn’t do a real good job of explaining any of that.

I’m also not a big ‘punster’ and there is quite a fair amount of that in this, with a few essays / chapters fully devoted to it. Despite being a dad, I’m far from prone to dad jokes – which the pun is a staple of – and for that, actually puns usually bore me. I’m not angered by them, just bored of them. I don’t believe of them as the “lowest form of wit” but I also just tire of them easily.

I wish there was more substance to this, and more on ‘how wit is derived’ rather than describing various forms of wit. Because I think we can all point to something witty when we hear / see / read it; and so I rather see the inner workings, the behind the scenes, rather than the obvious and what I can clearly see in front of me.

I think this is an entertaining read, but I think it just lacks a lot of substance and could use a lot more to it. Frankly wish the general idea behind it was a bit more expansive than what we got, or maybe the scope was a bit different than what the book alluded to it being.

Similar to my beer reviews, where I gave my Untappd score, followed the global average Untappd rating, I will do the similar here but with GoodReads. GoodReads and LibraryThing are my primary forms of Book Cataloguing and recording using apps; they are basically the Untappd for the book world. I started with LibraryThing many years ago (honestly can’t even remember, but I want to say 2013 or maybe 2012. Sadly, GoodReads has surpassed it and I use that much more now (despite my not caring – and actually loathing – of Amazon). GoodReads only lets you review in full stars, where LibraryThing let you review down to the 1/4th star. So I will most likely be giving my review scores to the 1/4th star (similar to Untappd letting you review to the 1/4th bottle cap), but showing my rounded score via GoodReads, and then showing the global average GoodReads score.

My GoodReads score: **3/4 (rounded – ***)
Global GoodReads Score: 3.32 (as of 4.5.20).

Thank you everyone for reading my first non – beer related article on the blog and site. Curious how reaction will be to me using my beer blog to post non – beer related things and more personal things. Who knows, maybe the blog gets expanded into all kinds of new categories in the future, and it’ll look just like one gigantic spider with tons of spider webs linking to millions of things. Or maybe in the future I’ll branch out and just have a different site for these things and move them over to there.

Let me know in the comments what you think of the branching out. What you think of me doing book reviews, etc. Don’t worry though, there will still be beer related content here on the blog, especially from the other writers, as I take a bit of a hiatus from the beer side of things personally for a bit. Thank you for joining us here at The Beer Thrillers. Be sure to stay tuned for many of the various things in the future that I have planned.

Cheers!

-B. Kline

Thank you for visiting our blog. Please make sure to follow, bookmark, subscribe, and make sure to comment and leave feedback and like the blog posts you read. It will help us to better tailor the blog to you, the readers, likes and make this a better blog for everyone.

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